Lenskart to set up 500 stores to ramp up offline presence

New Delhi, Mar 16: Prescription eyeglasses e-tailer, Lenskart is planning to add 500 brick-and-mortar stores across the country within next six months as it looks to beef up its offline presence.

The company, which currently has 70 stores operating through franchisees in 29 cities, said the shops will "compliment" its online business.

"We are planning to launch 500 new shops through the franchisee route within the next six months. Out of this, 100 will be exclusive stores and the rest will be shop-in-shops," Lenskart CEO Peeyush Bansal told PTI.

He added that these shops will complement its e-commerce business. The company is also aggressively expanding its in-home eye check up business, which helped the City-based firm garner more than Rs 2.5 crore in revenue from the service.

"We partner eye specialists for the in-home checkups and we are rapidly scaling this up. This is an untouched market. We want to take up the number of eye-check ups per day to 5,000 by this year end," he said, adding that the firm will invest more than Rs 1.2 crore in the coming months.

The company will fund its expansion plans from the money it had raised earlier this year. In January, Lenskart had raised Rs 135 crore in series C round of funding from a consortium of investors led by TPG Growth.